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People Who Work In HR Anonymously Share The Biggest Office Scandals They’ve Had To Deal With, And Here Are 30 Of The Wildest Ones
Who doesn't like some workplace drama? Well, some people actually don't, but I think a lot of us would be eager to hear the latest tea about our coworkers. There's one group of people that will likely hear about all the scandals, whether they want it or not. As you've probably guessed, it's the HR team. And they can't just be passively judging listeners, they have to actually deal with it.
One Reddit user approached this group of company secret keepers and asked them what the biggest office drama they'd ever witnessed was. HRs happily shared their office scandals as their answers are virtually anonymous and untraceable. And the stories were wild. It seems that infidelity is second nature and that stealing company funds to fund your Tesla is fine until you get caught; after all, TV shows have to get their inspiration from somewhere.
1.5k replies later, Bored Panda selected the best stories about office life gaining some flavor — not necessarily good flavor, but flavor nonetheless. Scroll down to see the spiciest cases seen by HRs, upvote your favorites, and if you have an intriguing story, be sure to share it in the comments!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
One of the employees was having random Grindr hookups in the bathroom at work so his wife wouldn't find out. He would go missing for a half hour at a time multiple times a day. We watched the camera to figure out what he was doing. Over and over again he would lead different guys into the bathroom. One day alone we counted 6 different guys. We confronted him about it. Was in the process of letting him go and all of a sudden he grabs a pair of scissors and holds them to his throat. Screaming about how we ruined his life and he's going to end it all. Little did he know security was walking in when he was going off. The security officer walked right behind him and in one motion got the scissors and was restraining the guy. We called the police and EMTs. They took him away. About a month and a half later, he came back in claiming to have found Jesus. He and Jesus apparently prayed it over and they believe he should get his job back. One of the higher ups heard about it and said "when Jesus starts paying the payroll, then Jesus can decide who should work here."
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#2
Not hr but recruiter. Found out a potential candidate was fired from his previous job because he threw his boss into a dumpster. Dude was 6'5 so yes. Picked his boss up over his head and threw him until the dumpster. Had to admit I'm envious.
#3
Not HR and not me but a former colleague.
He had given notice at his company. During his 2 week notice they had hired someone to manage the team that he worked on. The manager called a team meeting to introduce himself to the team.
The first thing he said was "I'm going to need all the ladies to let me know when their monthly cycles are because I don't need that kind of craziness!"
He proceeded to talk about a Black woman's hair. And literally every other possible insensitive topic you can imagine.
During my friend's exit interview he said to the HR person "I bet you're getting a lot of calls about X's meeting today!" They said no. He proceeded to tell them the whole story. The HR person excused themselves for a minute. The new manager was being led out by security when my friend walked out of the exit interview.
#4
We had a christian married man who got offended at bad language or slightly off color jokes that were borderline inappropriate but still mostly acceptable in the workplace. We had to sit down with team members on his behalf a few times because he was so offended and felt the office needed to have higher morals. Come to find out, he is having multiple trysts a week with other men at local motels. Scheduling these meetups from his work computer, Shortly after IT flagged one of the sites we was frequenting, we hear that his wife has filed for divorce and a bitter battle began. She found out about the affairs with other men and was a stay at home mom to their 4 children. She wanted alimony as this guy was pretty successful and earned a lot of commissions. He tanked his production to limit how much he had to pay her in both child support and alimony.
On the surface he was such a stand up guy who preached strong christian values but the reality was he not only cheated on his wife, he stiffed his kids and ex wife the support they deserved.
#5
Our HR Lady told a pregnant factory worker "you should have thought about that before you got knocked up" when an employee asked "can I move to a different department so I'm not exposed to so many chemicals?"
#6
Security footage showed my manager rummaging through a computer he had no reason to be on. IT checked out the computer, and they found he deleted some security footage... so they recovered it.
He was fired for having sex with one of the employees at work. She was fired, too.
Marcellus II 1 year ago
It's rummage-ception. He would have to go to that computer again, to delete the footage of him deleting footage. But that would be filmed again, so he has to delete again... The take-home message: The only solution is to stage a violent destructive accident.
#7
Oh dear Lord, I am friends with an HR attorney for a large agency. So so many stories but possibly my favorites is one where they walked in and fired one woman for dereliction of duty soon as she showed up for her shift. Like she was horrible at her job and barely performed, she was probational and it was clearly not working out. She and her boss leave for lunch and when they return, they discover employee is back on campus and working like nothing happened. Even greeted them in the gates.
They are shocked and ask why she’s there when she’s been terminated. Employee answered that “I’m working you can’t just fire me. This is my job.” And proceeds to turn around, ignore them, and keep working. They again repeat she’s been terminated she needs to go. She says “I reject that, I don’t accept your termination”
She literally had to almost be dragged out. It was quite entertaining.
#8
I worked at an ad agency where the HEAD of HR sent a companywide email and attached an unsecured Excel Spreadsheet containing everyone in the company's salary. It was a crazy 24 hours or so after that, and several people walked when they found out what co-workers and peers were making over them, and it put some pretty nasty pay-related inequality on display.
She was NOT fired.
#9
I'm not HR but the person that was in charge of all of our Purchasing (raw materials, equipment, tools, etc.) was fired 2 months ago because there are $500k worth of purchases on the company credit card for tools that are nowhere to be found. It now makes sense that he was able to afford the same model of Tesla ($75k) as the owner of the company even though he was an hourly employee that only worked like 5 hours a day.
#10
I use to work in a nursery for kids age 0-5. The director was male, around 50, married with 4 children some of them young and some of them young teenagers. He was super friendly and got on well with everyone.
There was a nursery worker who started at 17 but was now 19, she was a nice but quiet girl with a troubled family.
The director left his wife for her.
It left a really bad taste in everyones mouth.
#11
The manager was having an affair with one of our team members and no one knew. It was lunchtime and his wife came to surprise him and drop some food off. Me, my other colleague and his wife were walking together towards the kitchen, she was telling us how her husband has been working so late and he doesn't get time to eat lunch so she wanted to make sure he doesn't overwork.
We walked down towards the small corridor towards the kitchen and saw the manager spanking our team member while she was up against the wall. His wife dropped the food bags in shock and was trembling and fainted. My colleague called an ambulance.
Manager and team member were fired for their inappropriate behaviour on company grounds. We don't know what happened to the wife.
#12
An outbreak of herpes at a branch office.
Most of the staff at this office were engaged in a web of affairs that would most accurately be described as Genital Musical Chairs.
I fired the HR rep for this branch office because she was involved in the affairs. I also fired two who were on probation for other poor job performance and the rest resigned. The handful of staff members who were not involved in the affairs were transferred while the branch office was closed.
#13
I used to work at a tech startup, you know the type lots of nap pods/ relaxed, company culture and open bar after work hours.
One evening CEO, head of HR, head of sales and myself had just returned from a business trip returned to the office to collect some stuff and found a 3 way going on the conference room next to the CEO’s office, they were all fired and all married.
1 of them tried to sue for wrongful termination 😂
Telepathetic 1 year ago (edited)
"..... nap pods/ relaxed, company culture and open bar after work hours" . What did they think was going to Happen?
#14
I feel like I’ve been waiting for this moment for almost a decade.
One time, I had to do an HR investigation because somebody talked about somebody else’s dog. As in their canine. Ruff ruff.
In the end, it was determined that someone had, in fact, talked disparagingly about someone else’s dog. And was advised, moving forward, to refrain from making disparaging remarks about peoples pets. I wish I was joking.
I also had to investigate two people who were caught having sex in the office bathroom while most of us were at an off site event.
#15
Not me, but my mom.
Someone got fired and they smeared their s**t all over the bathroom on the way out. From then on people had to be escorted out by security.
#16
I wasn't in HR at the time, but I once worked at an office where someone allegedly was fired for microwaving their socks in the break room.
#17
Normal scandal. The owner left his wife for his secretary. BUT—-the wife owned 50% of the company and she made him pay through the nose for it. He was a total stereotype! The company had become really prosperous, he started working out, got a really expensive sports car (Lamborghini, I think). Then he dumped his wife, was publicly involved with secretary, left his company to be run by other people and ran off to California, married, and had kids. He was kind of a s**t head before that anyway.
#18
Owner of the company had an affair with the head of legal. They ran away to Europe together for an extended trip. He embezzled money to pay for the whole thing and the company went under as a result. Investigations a plenty.
#19
My project manager assistant was a centerfold beautiful woman and also extremely good at her job, the best PMA I’ve ever had. She isn’t my PMA anymore because a bunch of the guys in the office ( me included) stopped by a strip joint on the other side of town during a bachelor party for one of the guys and there she was up on stage. She was shocked and ran off stage when she saw half the office there. Everyone felt terrible and we tried to play it off that we didn’t see her, etc. but she still quit.
Gardener of Weeden 1 year ago
Really Sad thing is, if she was paid a decent salary she would not have needed to work the 2nd job.
#20
Older one: New employee found during background check to have over 100 aliases and actively wanted by the FBI for industrial espionage, and we were the next target. He was kept on long enough for the FBI to close the case.
More recent: A director-level individual who slowly replaced almost every employee under him with a contractor, all from the same entity. Turns out he and his wife ran it. And every time a contract was up there would be an excuse to replace the person, complete with a new finder's fee for a new employee. His fake contracting agency wasn't even getting most of his employees paid. He was finally busted when he used a company computer to log into his personal bank account and pay an employee who was threatening to walk.
Kate Jones 1 year ago
Kind of weird that the guy is on the most wanted list and has managed to stay hidden for that long but a standard background check managed to find him.
#21
Two concurrent office dramas that resulted in a mass firing.
First, my boss (m late-thirties), an ex-middle school teacher, hired and then knocked up an 18 year he used to teach. This is after he showed up to work a month before with a black eye, a gift from the baby daddy of the other teenage employee he was sleeping with. He was fired, divorced,and estranged from his own teenage children.
Meanwhile, his office enemy, another department director, was fired for paying her own employee to be her child surrogate.
#22
We had a team building day and the CEO made it so his team won. The 3 married people (not to each other) had sex in the hot tub.
#23
The #2 or #3 HR lady got drunk at the holiday party and groped a bunch of people, stuck her tongue in someone’s ear and fondled a guy’s wife. The head of HR swept it all under the rug and told all the witnesses and people she grabbed to “manage it properly”.
I quit pretty soon after that. F**k that place.
#24
Back in 2000ish one of my coworkers had a giant crush on a guy in the office. Eventually they started dating, then one day his fiance showed up to confront him....as did the three other women in the office he was banging. He was due to be deployed in two weeks, almost the perfect crime.
#25
Not HR, but One of the founders was having an affair with the head of Human Resources. All that ended at some point and later they found out the head of HR was lying on her resume about her degrees lol. That was an awkward day - I sat right outside their offices and got to watch her slowly take all her stuff out of her office while he ignored her.
#26
One shift lead having an affair with his wife with another shift lead girl at work.
They both opened the store in the morning, and before any customers arrived they would bang on the prep table, wtf.
One day when I had to check the cameras for something, I was watching it on fast forward starting from that morning and was shocked to see them doing it lol. I watched it for a bit before spilling the beans to my manager.
#27
My female boss was banging her male boss in the parking garage. Working late and her cell phone off, my bosses husband came looking for her and found them in her car. Fight ensued. Got the story from the garage security guy. My boss and her boss both had black eyes the next day at work. I didn't get to see what the husband looked like. Both bosses continued their jobs like it never happened.
Icecream Sarang 1 year ago (edited)
My female boss was banging my male colleague. Her husband showed up, beat the @;$;&/& out of him AND her on government property. The MPs arrested him, and she got a restraining order. The couple ran away to Hawaii with her kids the next day, and have been married for 15 years this summer living on Oahu.
#28
A guy I hired (and fired a week later due to poor performance) got caught robbing a bank a few weeks later....
#29
Not HR, but I once received an email that wasn't meant for my eyes.
A female coworker was angry with a male coworker (both from a different department, I didn't know them) since he had promised to leave his wife for him after they already had a lengthy affair.
I told my boss and he recommended I would simply delete the email and pretend it didn't happen.
#30
We had to fire an Union worker. She was on this weird feminism power trip. She wanted to see more women in the positions that were generally male dominated. And, honestly, that's fine. But how she went about was a lawsuit in the making. Actively sabotaging men in a bid to get them fired then throwing temper tantrums when caught. Forcing untrained women into positions that they weren't certified in. And then, if you were a woman and spoke out against being forced into a position that you weren't trained in and wanted to get into a safer role into you had the training, she would turn against you and try to have you fired. This was at a plant with horribly toxic metals, molten metal around 1400 degrees, and machines that could take a person's hand off in a single stroke. Like, if we have an accidental release, every house in a 3 block radius would need to be evacuated type of danger.
Then there was this other chick. Came here with that same feminist stuff. But in her case, it presented itself in her wardrobe. She was in constant violation of the dress code. Our dress code is there so we don't get them chemicals, molten metal and whatever on us. And her dumbass was walking around in thigh-high boots and tiny mini-skirts. Everytime someone would say something she would act like it's sexism and s**t. Eventually, one of our visiting customers took issue with how she was dressed and complained. This chick tried to pull the sexism card again until she learned that the customer in question was a woman. Then it became out how this customer was setting the feminist movement back and s**t. This employee ended up on this s**t list for a lot of the higher-ups because of this. So when the bathroom incident happened, everyone knew she was gone. Everyone but her apparently. So yeah, she went to used a men's bathroom over a women's just because she felt like it. While she was in there, a man came in to take a p**s. She lost her mind and tried to act like she was in danger and demanded he should be fired. For the guy's part, he didn't even know she was there. Just came in, went straight to the urinal, then walked out. She had been watching him through the fabled stall gap. When she was asked why she didn't go to any of the other women's bathrooms on this floor (there's five women's bathroom to three men's) she wasn't able to answer the question. Well, after her termination, she came back with a lawsuit. Claiming she was fired due to sexism. She loss and the company cracked down harder on dress code violations and making sure people understood which bathrooms they were supposed to be using.
What do you think ?
Terry Rex 7 months ago
No it is not they had a bunch of other stuff in there too stupid.
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3 Owls In A Coat 1 year ago
Yeah the most dramatic thing that’s happened at my work lately is that someone put root beer in the Coca Cola vending machine.
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Dillon Brown 1 year ago
All these stories be like "not HR but I decided to make an erotic work place fan fic and post it here"
Terry Rex 7 months ago
No it is not they had a bunch of other stuff in there too stupid.
Load More Replies... 3 Owls In A Coat 1 year ago
Yeah the most dramatic thing that’s happened at my work lately is that someone put root beer in the Coca Cola vending machine.
Load More Replies... Dillon Brown 1 year ago
All these stories be like "not HR but I decided to make an erotic work place fan fic and post it here"
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